For Amon and Oscar, every day was a nightmare, they had currently spent 5 days on the road, and save for a few meager battles that were easily won by Rodrcik alone it was completely boring. Sure, the exercises they needed to do were excruciating, but being in agony bored is so much worse than being in agony with something going on.

After Oscar started braiding his hair, he didn’t need to participate in the guided meditation, so instead Fionn started teaching him Spear fighting styles. The adventurers were only going to give them more awakening stones when they had mastered their current abilities, to make sure they understood their entire skillset. Amon had gotten his first awakening stone yesterday. It was an Awakening Stone of the Magus, and it awoke an ability from his Magic Essence called Mystic Barrier, it puts a bubble shield around a person he can see. When the bubble pops it creates a shockwave that’s tangential to the amount of force the shield absorbed.

Oscar was proud of Amon for getting a hang of his abilities. The ability from his Master Confluence was hard to grasp, Fionn could take a direct look into his abilities and give him an exact description of each of his abilities, he just couldn't use it. The ability was to make each of his Essence abilities make the next one stronger, until he went a second before using the next one. The problem was that of the five abilities he had, two were passive, one was his wall walking and the only other one was his ability to summon his spear, which had a one minute cooldown. If he used his wall walking ability and then his spear, his spear would form a bit tougher, but the second the ability was up, the toughness would go away.

He physically couldn’t use it, but he was too embarrassed to tell the adventurers he couldn’t, he was also worried that he wouldn’t ever be able to use it. An essence user can only be as strong as their weakest ability, literally, if he could never use that ability, he’d be forever stuck at iron rank.

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“Just tell them, they’ll understand” Amon said laying on his bed reading a book

“I can’t, they’ll abandon me.” Oscar said, pacing around the room that Amon had claimed as his.

“That’s idiotic, I’ll tell them.” Amon said, dog-earing the book before setting it on the surprisingly comfortable bed.

“Wait no, don’t.” Oscar said following Amon out the door.

After descending the stairs they saw the adventurers huddled around the table, Fenrir looking up the stairs at them.

“We don’t understand and we’re abandoning you.” Fenrir said, his face and voice reflecting nothing but pure seriousness.

Oscar looked upset before Amon slapped him lightly on the shoulder.

“Fenrir has amazing hearing, he’s just messing with you, you dolt.” Amon said

“Oh that makes more sense, yeah” Oscar responded.

“Sit down Oscar” Rodrick said, Oscar quickly followed his instructions and sat down across from him, Amon following him. “People have different theories about this, but some people-” Rodrick started saying before Onwnyn interrupted “Stupid people that understand nothing.” “Thank you Onwyn, some people think your whole Essence Ability combination is built up from the moment you absorb your Confluence.”

“Those people are wrong!” Onwyn said before seeing Oscar’s aura reflect his sadness, “but… there is some truth to it, a tiny tiny amount of truth that they base their whole theory on, but there is some truth. Awakening stones have a lot of different abilities they can unlock in each essence. Some people think it’s random, or assigned to you based on your essences, but they’re influenced by your soul and your other Essence abilities. That ability you unlocked means you’re going to get enough essence abilities to make it worthwhile.”

“But to use it, you need to unlock some more powers,” Calida said, putting an awakening stone on the table in front of Oscar.

“This is an Awakening stone of the-” Calida bega saying, before getting interrupted by Fionn.

“Magus” Fionn interrupted.

“Thanks Fionn,” Calida sighed before saying.

“Any time, I’ll help you with the ritual.” FIonn said. Fionn had an ability to provide the magic for rituals herself, instead of using spirit coins. She had a huge mana reserve, however she had no health or stamina, using mana for all of it. To use her magic is essentially to use her own life force, however she had lots of it, and it recharged fast, she could recharge it even faster by consuming spirit coins.

Monsters were made of magical energy manifested in a physical form, and after they die, they degrade over the course of a few hours, their mana getting released into the open air. With a lotting ritual, you can have the mana take the form of specific items, most commonly spirit coins, ironic because the lotting ritual itself takes spirit coins, although it usually does produce more than it consumes.

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Fionn can use this ritual without spirit coins, and thus it has a higher gross yield if she does it. She can also impart her will on it to form magical items, although most monsters they could kill at this level wouldn’t produce anything even remotely magical.

Oscar followed Fionn outside, and both quickly sat across from each other on the ground. Fionn looked almost alien to Fionn, however he was quickly being normalized to her blue everything, eyes, lips, hair, skin everything is a translucent blue, making her look like a creature of living blue mist. He knew intellectually that she didn’t mean him harm, but his fight or flight response triggered almost every time he saw her. It definitely didn't help that she had no outline with Oscar’s visual ability, she always knows what she’s going to do. He never wanted to react this negatively to her, but an intrinsic reaction in someone is near impossible to fix.

Fionn seemed to take a deep breath, however if Onwyn was here, they’d realize that Fionn could normalize the ambient mana of the nearby region, something very important to casting rituals. Then light shone from the grass beneath them, and started rising. 3 discs made of hard light started floating up, spinning around, and changing angles. The awakening stone that Oscar held in his hand started dissolving into the air, leaving a shimmering cloud that then absorbed into Oscar's body, giving him a new ability.

“It awoke an ability from adept, called Swift Recovery. It reduces your next ability you use after you use it.” Fionn said, as the lights began fading

“So it doesn't really help me?” Oscar asked.

“As it is an activated essence ability it will help, you just need to be patient” Fionn said

“Can I have you translate something for me?” Oscar asked

“The Runes on your New Water Knife?” Fion assumed

“Yes.” Oscar said, reaching into his bag and pulling out his and his fathers knives. Fionn pointed at each rune on his father’s knife. Starting with the physical and mental runes:

“The ones you already know, balance and patience. The one you don’t: It doesn't exactly have a one to one translation, but it essentially means that he would rather wait for the perfect answer than take any of the good ones he’s presented with.” Fionn explained “Your fault is the exact opposite: impatience, you would rather take the very first choice you are given. Your physical rune is Endurance, and your mental one is… Unflinchingness, it’s your ability to move forward, no matter what’s happening.”

“That’s what my father thinks of me?” Oscar said

“That’s what your father knew about you.” Fionn said

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The boy’s started on their muscle training. They were stuck with simple body weight exercises, there were ranked weights, however in Shran they were expensive, and there were very few options to choose from. One of the weirdest things they trained at was something Fenrir called Wildrunning, the others called it freerunning. It features using their new higher speed, their spirit stat enhanced perception, and whatever other mobility options they have, namely Oscars Ethereal Stride, and Amon’s Quickair Defense, although it took Amon a few hours to actually realize he could use it for mobility.

The men would race through the densest part of the forest they could find. Oscar almost always won these races, being able to race up walls helped him reach the part’s of thinnest foliage. Amon definitely gave it his best shot but he didn't have the same movement abilities luckily Amon knew that he wasn’t really racing against Oscar, but his previous best. The terrain was changing every day, but Fionn could time perfectly and could remember the times both Oscar and Amon had, and plot them on a simple graph; both boys showed fairly decent improvement so far. Next was the endurance portion of their training, this would last mostly the entire day, both men had Fenrir’s fog wolves grafted onto them, improving their speed, but not making them much stronger. Their bags were mostly empty due to them both traveling light, not needing to carry food, or a place to sleep, or a tent, or anything really, so Rodrick filled there bags with rocks so they get a complete workout, then at the end of the day they either do combat training with Jeremy and then do guided meditation under one of the heroes. Oscar didn’t participate in the guided meditation, and thus he instead practiced spear forms with Fionn, who knew multiple martial arts that featured spears, and even a few that used his specific abilities.

There were a handful of towns and even a couple smaller cities on the path they were taking to Arde-Glaw. Each time they would restock of raw food, and more awakening stones for Amon and Oscar, who were quickly becoming closer friends after their fight, instead of the silence that used to accompany the day of travel they instead worked on possible combinations and synergy’s between their two power sets, and methods to win against some specific monsters of the region something helpful, as Fionn had realized that if they only train against Jeremy, they won’t grow as fast if they keep fighting the same enemies, meaning that the adventurers have been finding groups of weak or small enemies for Oscar and Amon to beat. These monsters were usually Bark Crabs, decapod looking things with a bark-like shell on their back, they were about as big as a normal human torso and near impossible to spot at a distance. They were defensive and fairly fast, but their attacks didn't really do all that much damage, the most harm one ever did was hide on the trunk of a tree that Oscar was running up. Oscar’s ability didn't let him walk on living things so it didn't grip, making Oscar fall a couple meters onto the ground. Luckily Oscar had the foresight to flip around a little bit, landing on his feat.

Oscar's spear had a hard time piercing the tough shell of the Bark Crabs but if he could flip them over they were pretty easy to kill, and fairly profitable to loot. Getting them on their back was harder said than done. Oscar usually let Amon handle that part, flipping them over was easier when you can make your skin as hard as steel.

The monsters of the area were varied, some were ambushers like the Bark Crabs, a few of them flew and attacked in passing, a few others were actively hunting them, but failed in their approach. Due to the mix of different necessary fighting styles, they were getting in a more varied fighting repertoire which caused their current understanding of their skills to skyrocket. The closer they got to their goal, the higher the magic of the region, meaning stronger monsters. Oscar and Amon weren’t growing as fast as the monsters, meaning that more and more each day they had to pick their battles.